Republicans have often accused the Obama administration (and Democrats in general) of being soft on terrorism. Former VP Cheney even claimed that Obama’s policies were increasing the probability of a catastrophic nuclear or biological terrorist attack.
Indeed, in the wake of the recent attempted airline bombing over Detroit, Republicans have tried to blame the unsuccessful attack on Obama. A Republican candidate for governor of Michigan even tried to use the incident to raise money:
If you agree that we need a Governor who will stand up the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security please make a most generous contribution of $25, $50, $100 or even $250 to my campaign.
But this blame game is put to the lie by two facts. It turns out that two of the al Qaeda leaders who are responsible for the attempted attack were released from Guantanamo prison by the Bush administration in 2007. In a particularly ironic twist, the two terrorist leaders were sent to Saudi Arabia where they were entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and then set free.
Second, and even more telling is that the very same Republicans who are blaming terrorist acts on the Obama administration are responsible for the Transportation and Security Administration being leaderless. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) is blocking Obama’s nomination of Erroll Southers to head the TSA, despite bipartisan approval of Southers, who is a former FBI special agent and counterterrorism expert, assistant chief for homeland security and intelligence for the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department, the associate director of the University of Southern California’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, and served as deputy director of homeland security for Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Why is DeMint endangering US security? He wants Southers to promise that he will prohibit TSA workers from joining a union.
Once again, the Republicans are playing politics with your security.
UPDATE: Unbelievably, the Republicans continue to ratchet up the hypocrisy. Now Cheney and the Republicans are attacking Obama for waiting so long to make a statement about the attempted airline bombing and for treating the terrorist as a common criminal. However, Politico points out that Bush waited twice as long to make a statement after the shoe bomber attack in December 2001 and treated that terrorist as a common criminal, with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refusing to talk about the incident, saying “That’s a matter that’s in the hands of the law enforcement people.”
UPDATES: Good reads: Dick Cheney is a coward and a disgrace. And Obama gets heat for treating Americans like adults in terror incident. And Change you can defeat Al Qaeda with. And On Drama Queens and Cool Cats. And President Obama takes the heat President Bush did not. All well written and worth reading.
9 Comments
Let’s be honest here. We should profile the *real* threats- the idle sons of wealthy men. Osama bin Laden, George Bush, this guy.
Was McVeigh’s dad rolling in the dough? Just asking.
There’s a solution to terrorism — outlaw inheritance!
The evidence of criminal activity by the neocon right is long and documented but the truly stupid among us continue to believe that tax cuts and stratospheric debt are in the best interest of the public. Didn’t anyone ever question why the right runs complete morons for the highest office on the planet? FLASH: it’s so they will blindly do as they are told and approve any action to benefit the privileged of the rich. This is the very heart of communism and so thinly disguised as to be laughable to the rest of the world. We are no longer the shining light of freedom and the world knows it. I wonder when we will see it for what we have become since Nixon/Agnew.
The real threats are sons of idle wealthly men? You mean those jihadists that want nothing more than to destroy Americans and our way of life? Please cite statistics that prove more terrorists are white men from wealthy families rather than Muslim extremists.
Bush had his faults, and his first one was to appease the ACLU and libs that wanted to free these SOBs from GTMO. More proof that we should have kept them locked up forever.
Maybe you didn’t hear this from Obama today: “intelligence community had bits of information that should have been pieced together that would have triggered “red flags” and possibly prevented the Christmas Day attempted terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.” Been in office almost a year now, OWN IT.
Dear DCG, Did you ever hear that spoiled rich boy George W. Bush admit that invading Iraq was a “mistake”? A more blatent act of terriorism would be hard to find. A million people killed (OK, Hitler did better). Over 4000 lives lost from our country. Countless families broken up. Trillions of dollars in debt for his “war games”. Families in poverty because Rove’s aim was to concentrate the power in the Republican hands. Spell that Blackwater, etc. The reconstructionists who are funnelling the money. Now Bush actually knew it wasn’t a mistake but his handler Rove told him to go ahead. Have we had any apology from your hero? My hero apologized.
DCG, do you want us to own the fact that the Homeland Security Department that Bush and the Republicans put together has problems and needs to be fixed? Sure, I’ll agree to that.
And Wally never said the terrorists were white (although he mentioned McVeigh, who was white). He was just pointing out that like Osama bin Laden, this latest terrorist was the son of a wealthy man.
I honestly can not remember. Did Bush ever “Own” the shoe bomber??? That happened many years after Bush was in office. I know that he never “Owned” 9/11 because he was only in office 9 months.
Actually, the Shoe Bomber incident happened December 22, 2001, just a few months after 9/11. But Democrats never used that incident to criticize Bush, unlike now when Cheney and the Republicans will grab any opportunity — real or imagined — to criticize Obama.
Bush may not have “owned: 9/11 but Rice received very strong threats of terroists attacks from abroad in the summer of 2001. She passed the information on to Bush. Wasn’t in Bush’s plans at the time to deal with terrorists. He ignored the threats.